Are Your Drumsticks and Chicken Wings Cooked Through?

Cooking chicken on the bone is one of the best ways to cook it. The meat that’s nearest the bones is some of the most flavorful pieces you will ever taste (There’s a reason why stock is made from bones). Not only does it give your meat a richer flavor, the bone is going to ensure the meat stays moist, too, since it will take a little bit more time to cook since the heat has to go through the bone.

If handled and cooked properly, chicken can be safe from food poisoning hazards.

Too often however we encounter a bone-in piece of meat, like a chicken wing or a drumstick, that isn’t fully cooked through. We know it’s not cooked fully because when we bit into it, it’s still too pink and raw to be cooked or it just oozed blood as you sliced through the meat.

If you’ve had enough of these raw moments and #chickensad experiences, we have a trick to save you from ever having to bite into a still raw chicken wing or chicken leg: use your tongs and check its weight. Better yet, if you’re deep frying, it may actually float to the oil’s surface.

Now, we don’t mean for you to bring out the weighing scale (although that is probably a more accurate way). What we mean is a more simple weighing procedure: grab a chicken wing or leg from the hot oil using tongs and then check its weight. You want to see if it’s lighter now than it was when it was still raw. That’s because there’s a big difference in weight from a piece of raw meat and piece of cooked meat. A cooked piece of meat will weigh significantly less than when it was raw.

While this trick isn’t the most accurate way to determine your chicken legs and wings are cooked through, it’s a pretty indicative method without having to cut into the chicken piece and seeing yourself that it is cooked through. So, when next you are frying up some chicken wings and chicken legs using your favorite fried chicken recipe, check the weight of each piece of chicken. Once you notice it’s lighter, it’s good to take out of the hot oil and enjoy.